(ROME) - Italy's new pro-US Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Tuesday he would serve as a lynchpin in ties between the European Union and the United States.

Italy will be a "pillar of the friendship between Europe and the United States," the third-time prime minister said in his first speech before parliament since his April election victory.

Before his ouster in elections two years ago, Berlusconi established himself as one of US President George W. Bush's strongest European allies, notably in the run-up to the Iraq war despite massive opposition at home.

Bush, who has hosted Berlusconi both at the White House and his Texas ranch and has only eight months left in office, said he "looked forward" to working with the media tycoon again.

The Italian news agency ANSA, quoting diplomats, said Bush would probably make a stop in Rome on June 11 following an EU-US summit in nearby Slovenia.

Berlusconi, who has had a prickly relationship with Brussels in the past, said Tuesday that the European Union was the "engine of multilateral diplomacy."

The media tycoon regularly allowed Italy's public finances to flout EU norms when he was prime minister from 2001 to 2006, and already faces regulatory battles over rescuing the national flag carrier Alitalia and resolving the Naples rubbish crisis.

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